This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Consumers often forget what consumable items they have in their home. This is particularly inconvenient when shopping for groceries and/or planning a meal, without access to the content of their fridge, pantry and the like. Consumers may end up buying groceries in excess and/or forget to buy food items or other products they need.
Consumers also struggle to remember the expiry dates on the perishable items they have. Rather commonly, this results in unconsumed food and drink items being discarded, such as when their shelf life has expired.
Household appliances are becoming increasingly connected. A smart refrigerator is a smart appliance designed to help consumers to avoid unnecessary waste by maintaining inventory of the grocery items it stores. A smart refrigerator typically includes a computer system that includes inputs/outputs, such as through user interface devices e.g. a touchscreen, and is coupled to the Internet via a local wired or wireless network. Such a computer system may be added to a conventional refrigerator, e.g. a tablet computer attached to the refrigerator, or integrated or embedded within the refrigerator at the time it is manufactured. The smart refrigerator maintains inventory of its content, and may also issue alerts in respect of the shelf life expiration for a particular product on the inventory list and/or provide recipes and/or help the consumer with the preparation of a shopping list. It may also perform other functions, such as enabling its users to access the Internet, upload and store digital photos and so on. Some smart refrigerators also allow the user to access their internal data remotely, for example, via a mobile device with internet access.
However, for a smart refrigerator to be able to provide such services, consumers are typically required to manually enter all information concerning the products stored in the refrigerator, such as what the product is (for example by selecting from pre-defined categories), its size, its expiry date, and the like, and then make updates as the inventory changes.
Further, not all of a household's groceries are stored in the refrigerator, so relying on a smart refrigerator to create a shopping list can result in some items being missed.